


This Might Not be Good || Kuroo Tetsurou

by Rot_Llaves



Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [12]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), But he trying to fix it, Established Relationship, F/M, Fights, Fluff and Angst, Kuroo is dumb potato, Kuroo messed up, Makeup, Relationship(s), Romantic Fluff, Song: Little Red Rodeo (Phil Vassar), Song: She Wouldn't Be Gone (Blake Shelton), Song: What Kinda Gone (Chris Cagle), couple fights, post-manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24328636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rot_Llaves/pseuds/Rot_Llaves
Summary: "What did you do this time," a tired voice answered him after three rings."How di-" he tried to ask before he was cut off."She said you'd probably call. It doesn't take a genius to know you messed up somehow," the voice responded with the type of realistic jab that only a childhood best friend could get away with."Remind me again whose best friend you are," Kuroo retorted, his unease slipping into mild resentment."I like her more than you," Kenma replied flatly — his tone indicating the statement was merely a fact.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720834
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	This Might Not be Good || Kuroo Tetsurou

They'd had fights before. _Lord_ , had they had fights before.

But they had always been the exciting kind. The kind where their combative words had been hollow and the crescendo of their bickerings only led to heated kisses and maybe a few pictures crashing from the walls — not from fist fights but fits of passion.

This time was different. Kuroo Tetsuro felt it the moment those biting words left his mouth and he watched the affection in his girlfriend's eyes flicker from 20 percent to zero. It was like watching the last remaining sands pass the center of an hourglass and, in one of those time-stopping revelations that only come at the worst of times, he wondered when it had even gotten to 20 percent and when he had ever decided that was enough. _Maybe they had just reached their limit._

His thoughts cost him the opportunity to watch her silhouette cross the threshold of their shared home and the door slammed before his eyes had a chance to refocus. She was gone faster than he could run to the window, throw it open and attempt to stop her departure with honeyed words.

And he was left there, sinking to the floor with his back to the wall, pulling at the ends of his hair as he tried to figure out which cosmic deity he had angered to bring his life to this exact moment of complete and utter shit.

It was right around the third hour of sitting on the floor that his legs started to go numb and he realized that Emica was not coming back anytime soon. With a grunt, he heaved himself from the faux wood floor and attempted to walk toward his phone that was still teetering on the edge of the granite bar top after it had been slapped out of his hand in the earlier scuffle.

There were no notifications. No texts telling him what an ass he had been. No missed calls with dozens of voicemails carrying her crying voice saying they would work it out and that she'd be home soon. There weren't even any signs of her disgruntled, guard dog-like friends threatening rains of hellfire and fury at his most recent fuck up.

It was all oddly silent — and not even the kind of eerie silence that comes before the type of blow ups that tear apart everything you hold dear. No, this was silence of finality.

Kuroo uttered a lowly string of curses as he drug his right hand through his hair. Slowly, he began to pace back and forth across the space between the kitchen and living room, phone in hand, with his eyes glued to the floor in some form of frantic concentration.

He didn't want this to be the end — or at least he didn't think he wanted it to be the end. But if he didn't want it to be the end, then why had he told Emica that he didn't give a fuck who she'd run away to as long as it meant she'd stop getting on his fucking case about the goddamn girl in his goddamn thesis class.

It's funny the type of lies that fly out of your mouth when you feel like you're being attacked — when you've had the same fight about the same stupid (and yet incredibly important) things and you just want it all to stop. You just want to be the victor, instead of wanting to tackle the problem together. When you've just reached your limit.

It's also funny how, with the door slammed and his phone silent, their shared apartment — the one that had always seemed so small — suddenly felt too big and too quiet.

If she wasn't coming back, would it always feel this way? Too big and too quiet.

Emica hadn't taken moving in together lightly. It had only taken Kuroo two dates to know he wanted her with him always, and it had taken an accumulation of all his self control not to ask her to move in until they'd been dating (at least) a solid three months. She made him wait nearly a year.

"This isn't some spur of the moment decision, RooRoo," she had scolded him when he basically begged her for the fifth time in as many weeks. "I don't even know if I like you that much."

She always teased him when it came to serious things but she was still, somehow, the type of woman that didn't take the big things lightly. There were terms to her agreement to live with him, she had decided, and one of those was that they would find a new place together instead of moving into one or the other. (Something about starting a new stage of their lives on even footing.) They'd fallen in love with this apartment instantly — one for the way the light shone through the windows and the other for the fact that it had two whole bathrooms. ("We can both poop at once!")

Kuroo couldn't live here if she wasn't. He couldn't live with the ghost of their love around every corner and when he could see the apparition of their life together in every single space. _Was it too early to think about that? Should he be focusing on fixing instead of mourning? Why is he even thinking about living with ghosts?_

The tears started without his permission and he didn't even notice their appearance until they began falling on his hands — one in a fist and the other clenched around his phone. He stopped pacing after the first one broke through his train of thought with a small splash.

He'd call her mom. That's what he'd do. She probably went straight to the comforts of her first home and the woman who always managed to make the pain fade away with a soft smile and warm food.

The phone nearly dropped from his fingers as he scrambled to pull up the contact that usually connotes holiday obligations or birthday surprises. The deep breath he took as the phone toned out the waiting call held none of that type of joy in his chest and he felt like he may as well be drowning from the weight of the dread coursing through him.

"She's not here Tetsu-chan."

"Oh," he breathed out into the mobile device. "I, uh... Do you know where she is, Yano-san?"

"No," Emica's mother answered curtly. "She said she needed to go out and clear her head a while. You must have really stepped in it this time, Tetsurou."

A sob almost escaped him. "I really did," he answered softly. "Have a good evening, Yano-san."

"Mmm," she responded. "Please be careful, Tetsu-chan."

She hung up leaving Kuroo reeling, wondering if she was asking him to be careful with her daughter or himself. Maybe it didn't matter — mothers had a way of hiding their real concerns behind others. And he had other things to think about.

_If she wasn't with her mother, then where could she possibly be?_

He racked his brain for another hour, taking up his phone and continually calling mutual friends begging them for anything that could help him find her until he had to bite back his pride and call the person who always seemed to have the answers for him.

"What did you do this time," a tired voice answered him after three rings.

"How di-" he tried to ask before he was cut off.

"She said you'd probably call. It doesn't take a genius to know you messed up somehow," the voice responded with the type of realistic jab that only a childhood best friend could get away with.

"Remind me again whose best friend you are," Kuroo retorted, his unease slipping into mild resentment.

"I like her more than you," Kenma replied flatly — his tone indicating the statement was merely a fact.

"Yeah, yeah. Since you're so close these days, do you know where she is?"

"Have you even tried looking for her, or are you just calling people to tell you where she is?"

"Does it matter," Kuroo questioned. "It's looking for her either way, isn't it?"

"Maybe she was right about you, then," Kenma responded, pointedly, as if he was considering the idea himself. "But I never took you to be a man who loved within limits."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," Kenma said airily. "Why don't you figure it out."

The phone in Kuroo's hand beeped and went dark before he had a chance to reply and he was left there lowering his phone to stare at the blank screen with a grimace and the lingering thought of _"I did not call you to ask for some convoluted self-help bullshit."_

All thoughts of how _unhelpful_ Kenma had been were soon replaced by the complicated, unending, probable simulations running through his head about the steps she'd taken just to be sure that not a single aspect of this blow up would go easily for him. How many phone calls had she made? How many people had she talked to and how many places had she stopped into? Was this actual malice in premeditated avoidance, or was she just seeking out comfort in the people she trusted the most?

And what was Kenma on about loving within limits? Of course he had limits. Everyone did. All functional and logical beings had limits that pushing against was just asking for trouble — asking for blow ups and irreconcilable differences.

Everything has its limits, so it only made sense that his love did. Didn't it?

Except, maybe it wasn't his love's limits that were hit today. It was his patience. His love still had a while to go and it was probably time to prove that. So, he did the only thing he could think to do now — now that he'd run through every precalculated and logical move he could make from standing in his living room. He swiftly grabbed his keys from their perch next to the door as he sprinted out the door of their shared home to his shitty, years-old sedan and pulled out of the drive without so much as a thought about locking the door.

Emica was a tough, logical woman on her best days, but on her worst she was a woman of sentimentality with a flare for the dramatic. If he was going to find her — _and goddammit he was going to find her — then he was going to have to look for her in the places where her bleeding heart felt most at home._

__

The first place he raced to was the market where they'd met (because, despite being an absolute fuck up, Kuroo was the type of man that could remember even the way the sun was shining when his eyes first met her's, let alone the exact location where their fates intertwined).

__

She wasn't there. Nor was she at the cafe where he had confessed (in that corner booth that was meant for larger parties, but he had insisted they sit there anyway because he didn't want witnesses if that amazing woman was smart enough to reject him) or at the park where they had first kissed (a cliche really, but there was something about cherry blossoms that just begged you to make memories). Only the ghost of their memories together occupied the gym at his college (where he'd convinced her to dance without music after he'd taught her how to serve a volleyball) and the corner frozen yogurt shop where they had combined every flavor, topping and syrup... "for science." (That was the day they learned that pineapple does not pair well with caramel and Lucky Charms.) And God, _when had he forgotten how much he loved this ridiculous woman that he had so many good memories with?_

__

By the time the sun had set completely, Kuroo was exhausted, out of gas and he began to question how much further he was willing to go to chase something that might already be gone. It wasn't logical to keep going. If she didn't want to be found, then she didn't want to be found. There was no use going forward. Their limit had been hit.

__

_But maybe with love, the limit just does not exist._

__

There was one more place he could check — though he wasn't sure he wanted to find her there, because who would want to be reminded about their first-ever, big fight after the kind of fall out they were in the middle of now?

__

It was that hole-in-the-wall ramen shop two blocks away from the pound he had dragged her to after, one month of living together, to beg for a couple of kittens. He'd had his eye on a pair of siblings, one jet black and the other grey and white, that had been up for adoption for a few weeks. Kuroo had always had his heart set on the idea of coming home to the family-like setting of a woman he loved surrounded by fur-children.

__

Emica had said no the moment she realized where he was taking her, refusing to let him drag her inside with a string of excuses pouring out her mouth, and Kuroo's dream was effectively dead without any discussion. (Though, in the aftermath, he realized that maybe the discussion should have happened before they were outside the animal shelter.)

__

The fight had escalated from disgruntled comments about "not even giving it a chance" and "you never think things through" to shouts of "you never listen to me" and "we can't all live in a fantasy world like you" and ended with Kuroo watching a brown head of hair stomp away as he was left in front of the building, being watched by its occupants.

__

She'd made it half a block before he started following her and he kept following her all the way to the ramen house she'd stop outside of briefly before walking into. When he sat down across from her, at the table next to the window, she gave him a light glare before announcing that she had already ordered for him — saying something along the lines of "if you can make decisions for the both of us without me, well then I can too."

__

The noodles had been bland and the tempura soggy, but they had left the place laughing instead of yelling and with the promise that they could revisit the whole cat idea in a few months time. (The answer was still no in the end.)

__

It was one of those bittersweet memories that was impossible to shake and hardly made the location a relationship landmark, but that ramen house was special nonetheless. When he finally stepped inside, the owner eyed him with a weary smile — as if he recognized Kuroo and the reason he was here as the sad re-occurrence that it was. The tables were nearly bare, as closing time was fast approaching, but a familiar head of brown hair was tucked against the shop window, exactly where she had sat a few years ago.

__

"I thought I'd find you here," he said, trying to sound calm, rational and put together — everything he was not in that moment — as he made the pointed choice to sit next to her.

__

"No you didn't, you dumb potato," she said through a tearful laugh. "We both know this is the seventh or eighth place you looked."

__

Kuroo had to muster up all of his self control to not make a snide remark about the unlikeliness of a singular potato being dumb considering no potatoes had brains, because he realized _maybe that's the point_. And either way, now was not the time to give into such temptations.

__

"You're right," he breathed out as he reached for her hand. "But I'd never stop looking for you."

__

Emica responded with slightly pursed lips as she scrunched up her nose. The combination told Kuroo his girlfriend was stuck between disgust with his cheesiness, lingering fury over the entire situation, and a nagging heart telling her to forgive the idiot already — I mean, he did find her... eventually.

__

So, she eventually decided to give a heavy sigh and squeeze his hand back. The slight reassurance was all Kuroo needed to move forward and coil his arms around his girlfriend, burying his nose behind her ear.

__

"I love you so, so much," he whispered to her. Emica leaned her head toward his and moved it gently against his.

__

"More than that girl in your class," she asked, hesitancy mixed in with her teasing tone.

__

"Yes. God yes," he groaned into her skin.

__

"More than mackerel pike," she probed and he grunted an affirmation.

__

"More than volleyball," she questioned, a full smile on her face now.

__

"Let's not greedy here, Emica," he responded, a matching grin on his face as he pulled away to look at her face.

__

Their eyes connected and Emica's smile slowly faded as her brows pinched together in worry.

__

"Are we going to be okay, RooRoo," she asked him, voice wavering, and he pulled her into another tight hug, weaving his fingers through the hair on the back of her head while placing a kiss on her forehead.

__

"Yeah," he whispered. "We'll get through this."

__

_Because, sometimes, when you're really, truly in love — the limits of reason just don't exist._

__

**Author's Note:**

> This story brought to you by [ "She Wouldn't Be Gone"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-n6DsDG40) by Blake Shelton, ["What Kinda Gone" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvR-cDIORjA)by Chris Cagle , [ "Little Red Rodeo" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc8YPk5sIKE) by Phil Vassar and my SO's incessant pushing for me to quote Mean Girls. "The limit does not exist!" 🙄


End file.
